


joey drew's shoe exchange

by maleficentWatermelon



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-26 06:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18277295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maleficentWatermelon/pseuds/maleficentWatermelon
Summary: After God knows how many loops, Henry gets fed up.





	1. of uncharacteristic emotions

**Author's Note:**

> probably gonna have really short chapters but im doing my best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey gamers this isnt getting updates but it might be getting rewritten

Shock is probably an even rarer emotion on your face than rage is on Henry’s. Yet, the two of you stand there with your respective uncharacteristic expressions, Henry’s feet slightly spread as you look on. Forget _hours_ \- Henry was practically days early.

“H-hey, Henry, you’re early. You always did like to impress me,” you say, then, as your curiosity bests you- “How’d you manage that?”

“A friend once told me- no, a fair few times more than once, that it pays to carry a rope.” Your former friend, your plaything, stalks forward, his taller form bearing down on your shorter one “I’d say you should try it, but rope ain’t getting you out of this one, Mr. Joey Drew.”

You gulp. “Henry, hold on, let’s talk about this,” you begin, backed against your own kitchen sink, in your bathrobe. 

Henry practically growls at you. “No, Joey,” he spits his name like it’s the most foul of insults, “I **know** what you did. I **remember**. I remember _**all of them**_ , Joey!” He practically yells, then backs off. “Oh, no, **you** aren’t talking here. You aren’t bargaining, explaining, making commands. You aren’t gunna say another **GODDAMN** word!” and it's then that you can hear the other voices, or really iterations of the same one, layered under it. Cold fear flashes through your veins like coffee’s touch as it enters your bloodstream, clawing desperately at your heart from within the ribs. 

“No, Mr. Drew. I think it’s time you got a taste of your own medicine,” Henry states, voice flat, other versions of his voice audible now that you know what to look for. Gone is the kind-hearted, albeit rough-around-the-edges old man that you put through hell for what he did to you, and in his body is a cold, cold creature. A monster, mayhaps. A man whose words set your hairs on end and your armpits sweating. Something bright gold flashes in Henry’s eyes for a split second before you hear your own voice, the line that never got old, no matter how many times you’ve said it- “Come on down to the studio, old friend- I’ve got something to show you,” and everything goes black. 

You come to in a studio, a letter addressed to you clutched in your hand. Rereading it brings everything back- of course! Your name is Henry, and your… friend Joey had asked you here, even though the two of you had parted on a rather poor note. Still, you’d come back, and… hit your head on the door-frame? Yes, that must be it.

“Alright, Joey, I’m here. Lets see if we can find what you wanted me to see.”


	2. of headaches and the writing on the walls

Wally’s words sends shivers down your spine, a direct contrast to the voice winding from the player on the little shelf. Totems, eh? To appease the gods? It doesn’t sit well in your stomach, leaves a sense of urgency in your gut that goes on in turn to plant the seed of uneasiness and even fear in your mind. You glance around at the quiet halls of the old studio and process on down into what should have been the breakroom, but was… considerably different then when you had left.

Pedestals flank each side of the room, three on the left partnering the three on the right, framing a lever in the middle. Your steps echo oddly in the domed room as the image of the Ink Machine plays through your memories, a constant since you’d first clapped your eyes on the thing earlier. Reaching the last two greco-roman-esque pillars, you trace a finger around the edge of it, the marble cool under your fingertip. Wrench, doll, music, inkwell, gear, book… probably wouldn’t be too hard to find. 

Retracing your steps out to the junction where you’d found the breakroom, you expect to have to step over a loose board. Certainly, you don’t expect the innocently grinning face of the studio’s own Dancing Demon to meet your eyes. Just a cutout…

“Who put this here?!” you ask, and rub at your left shoulder with your right hand. You’re too old for this… You go to pass the almost playful looking cutout when a far more mean-spirited looking prank catches your eye. You rush forward into the small room, disbelief filling your eyes as you take in the white, sharp ribs blossoming out like the most hideous mockery of a flower, any inner organs that might have been present removed as precisely as a surgeons’ work. The worst part? The wrench is nestled snugly into the chest cavity as though the unfortunate creature had been born with it. You cover your hand with your mouth, then drag it down. “Oh, my God… Joey, what were you doin’?”

Black writing against a yellow wall catches your eye and you turn your head, squinting at the ink. Who’s laughing now? You look at the shade on the wall and the shade on the straps holding… uh… Boris onto the mock operating and decide it’s not him. You leave the room with an ink soaked hand gripping a miraculously clean wrench, a new soundtrack of various wet noises for your nightmares, and the worst headache of your life.

As you place the record almost reverently down onto the final shining unblemished surface, you run a hand through your hair, staining it. Muttering to yourself about the flow, you set off towards the theater. Each step earns you a satisfying clunk and often a long, squeaking creak as your foot disturbs some untouched board. You near the end of the hallway and, with not so much as a rustle of movement for a warning, a cheery-looking Bendy cutout leans cheekily out at you. You stop and clutch at your chest as it disappears behind the wall. You deteste this building, between the too quiet, stifling, almost choking air and the atmosphere practically SCREAMING that you’re being watched, you’re quite fed up. And, on top of it all, the shitty cherry on the shitty sunday seems to be that every time you read a message lashed permanently onto the rotting walls, your headache gets worse. Especially rereading the one about dreams.

You press on into the room. As you pass the projector, it does something no projector should ever be able to do without help- it flips on. Yellow light spills from its hypothetical mouth, projecting the studios face onto the wall. The grinning visage mocks you as you lurch forward and turn the wheel like your life depends on it, sloshing through the rapidly filling room, chased by the whistling that shouldn’t ever be a part of a silent film. You’re starting to think maybe activating the Ink Machine is a bad idea.

Back in the pedestal room, the lever gleams in a very tempting sort of manner, but the (larger) splat of ink under it is of more interest to you, because an even more tempting-looking cassette tape player rests innocuously there in the middle of it where it certainly had not been before, and, therefore, it had no business being there at all. You cautiously pick it up and press the play button. It’s some intern writer’s voice that comes booming from the speakers-

“Joey Drew sure does love his cartoons, yeah, but it’s the same old story every time! So they hired me to change up the story just a bit, but I like to think I did even better! You see, this new episode, it’s a real comedy bit- the same story, but almost a satirical spin on it, see? Like, to make fun of it while we write something fresh and new? A bit more exaggerated, a bit more danger, a bit more drama-” You hit the stop button frantically. More towards the end, there, the voice from the cassette labeled only as “A friend” had started to sound a bit like the one coming from your own throat.


	3. deals with the devil

The face you catch glimpses of through your cutout’s eyes are not the same face you are used to seeing. No, this man looks like Joey, sounds like Henry..?, makes all the faces Joey made… and yet… 

He answered the letter addressed to Henry and says all the lines Henry used to say before he started to remember. And no one at all has ever, ever, ever showed up to take Henry’s spot before. Certainly not Joey Drew himself. So although the sight of his face is enough to make your ink literally boil in rage that is as thick and black as the ink itself, you remain on your script.

Things progress as they used to- every old trick sending amusing jolts of fear through the man’s heart, hours spent finding the totems that leave you so, so, SO bored, trapped in the pipes. You’re more than determined to give this fucking walking asshole of a man his dues, but good things come to those who wait, and so its when you’re waiting patiently in the pipes that you “hear” the call.

You don’t hear it so much as feel it, a twinge in the ink way, way, way down underneath you, down where no one but Allison and Tom and the Lost Ones should be, and it definitely wasn’t them. You step threateningly out of the wall into the throne room, inky lines spreading across the room as efficiently as a chokehold. It’s with shock that you notice the open door behind your throne, a control panel and a multitude of screens showing camera feeds, and a VERY familiar looking man reclining in an office chair.

‘Henry…’ you think. ‘What happened to you?’ The human smiles at you, as though responding to the question you couldn’t really voice. 

“Hey there, Devil Darlin, I have a deal for you!” His eyes seem to pierce into you like a pin holding a butterfly on the wall, on display. “Joey’s soul, semi-literally, for our freedom?” Your smile grows wider. Henry hands you a tape and boy, do you know just where to put it.

Presented like the centerpiece of a handsome feast, the cassette very much drives the point home. Joey Drew, wearing Henry’s voice like a mask, nearly breaks the thing when he throws it down and you can’t help the soft chuckle that escapes the pipes in the ritual room. Joey doesn’t quuuuiiiiiiiiiiiiite notice, but it’s more than enough to make him hesitate when he pulls the switch.

This is the same old song and dance to you, now. The bright shimmer of freedom somewhat faded now, you slip out of the now-nailed up Ink Machine room, finally allowed a form outside of the Machine again. You have quick business to deal with in the pub, but after that you’re waiting for him. When he approaches, you go above and beyond. 

Your hands shove him down with ease and as he careens backwards, you hoist a leg over the lower board and carve long, unnecessary trails into the wood around you with your human-looking hand. He meets where the eyes would be on your head and you smile a touch bigger, already feeling the grin shivering on your face like the last autumnal leaf on a tree. Joey Drew scrambles up, pure terror written so clearly across his face, and begins to run for his life.

Your ink still floods the corridors as you hear the telltale crashing noises, but as usual you don’t give chase. No point in catching him so early, is there? The party has only just started.


End file.
